Theorist
Walter Benjamin
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Details
- Nationality
- German
Classifications
- Holder
- Individual
- Source of authority
- ReasonLived experience
- Subject
- Human centred
- Political position
- Subaltern resistant
- Mode of transmission
- Text drawing
- Knowledge type
- Propositional
- Epistemic cluster
- Western philosophical
Notes
Point of reference for Tafuri; in 'The Work of Art' (1936), scrutinized artistic autonomy as a relic of prehistoric ritual surviving in the bourgeois auratic artwork, contrasting it with reproduced artifacts' (photo, film, architecture) collective, distracted reception; architecture is the 'prototype' of 'tactile' (vs. 'optical') reception, replacing 'cult value' with 'exhibition value'.
Connections
- authored The Arcades Project
- associated with Art Nouveau
Sources
- Walter Benjamin. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. 1935.
- in Crysler, Cairns & Heynen (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, SAGE, 2012 — export p. 12-13 of 20
- in Crysler, Cairns & Heynen (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, SAGE, 2012 — export p. 16-17 of 19
Cite this entry
First published May 2026Last revised Jul 2026
CLAD. "Walter Benjamin." Atlas of Architectural Thought. CLAD, 2026. https://www.cl-ad.com.au/research/atlas/theorist/walter-benjamin/. Accessed July 17, 2026.